An underwater Hoolliieee! - What do you do when you can't see a thing?

On Thursday the 5th December dive 1 at 0730am was a bit of a roller coaster. 

There was I equipped for a commercial Fish ID descending to a reef with a surge level that challenged our new divers and which I thoroughly enjoyed.  It was just like being in a GIANT hammock with a massive swoosh in two directions - Brilliant. 

Unfortunately the Viz was a challenge, and so throughout the dive i only managed to spot 13 fish and 12 of those were yellow tailed snapper. 

So not a very representative survey then. :-)

So we decided as a team that there was little point trying to complete the planned reef survey for all that we had been trained in along the transept as it was more likely that we would damage the reef.  So first law of diving - dont touch the reef was enacted and so we concentrated on having fun and snorkelling off the shore and learning new things. 

Because of this I concentrated in recording other really important things from the trivia to the fun to lessons in sexing lobsters and freedive hunting... 

So here we go....
What I could see when I was diving... 

My bubbles - looking up

My fins - 1.5m

In honour of the new thing of taking a "selfie" - I went for as *ScaryasPossible*

  

 What do you do when you can't dive...?. 

Ruby Reading...... my choice too.

Or you could sleep away the day like Paul

Like Spot you could defend your coconut

Or when someone stole the coconut and threw it in the sea you could swim like Spot to collect the coconut...

Or like Simon and Snake you could go freedive hunting for dinner!

Mind you - it's a lot of physical effort and the catch has to be thrown into the canoe

And you need to watch out for "hangers on" who want the scraps

Then you have to gut and clean a Yellow fin Grouper and associated Lionfish....

 

And you start to lick your lips for dinner.......  

But first like Jason you have to dissect another load of lionfish to get the results off to the fisheries team

And then you have to learn about Spiny Lobster - One here is a lady and one is a man... Both are legal for harvest as the carapace is greater than 3.5" long.

This is the lady lobster - the clue is the extra claw on the foot of the fifth leg

This man lobster only has one claw on the foot of the fifth leg

The lady lobster on the right has inner and outer tendrils the man lobster only has outies

The point of the special claw and the innie and outtie tendrils is that of course the lady lobster needs these to manage egg production in the closed season when lobster reproduce.  It is not permitted to harvest a pregnant lobster.

You might of course also have to clean the underside of our Tornado speed and dive boat like Woolfie.

Scuba gear has a domestic engineering use too........ Thanks Woolfie

And finally you might sit down to a succulent zero miles dinner of rice, grouper, and grilled lobster tails in garlic butter with steamed veg.......

And face plant into a fishy dinner

All cooked by the wonderful Adrienne........  .................................................................. Yes it was a non diving day and so a couple of beers were consumed.....

supported by Snake whose specialty is to cook the lobster tails...... in between being very competitive at beach volley ball